Skills tend to be best for hunting. Trans on the one with the damage ability, check with others but I think weaponry may help priest. Whatever defensive abilities you can get from the others, as well as healing. You already mentioned trans survival - good, that's very important.

For defense, avoidance is your best return for the money for hunting. SoA is invaluable. Health sip rings are great. Bracelets next, con belt next, regen ring last. That's for one level - for L2 generally I get L1 of the rest then rotate back through, because they build off each other.

For hunting offense, crit pendants give the most return. Artie mace would help as well, though less than crit pendants, per credit.

Is endurance an issue with priest? I can't recall. If so, fitness. If still an issue, endurance ring. If not, ignore this part.

I like high level bashing without innersight. It takes away the 'this is for the grind' aspect and you can ignore the xp. A bonus is most of the time I see no visible difference if I die. While it's silly, it does make it a little less demotivating.

I like high level bashing without innersight. It takes away the 'this is for the grind' aspect and you can ignore the xp. A bonus is most of the time I see no visible difference if I die. While it's silly, it does make it a little less demotivating.

I'd agree to this but the feeling you get when you kill 20 denizens without a single percent going up is pretty demotivating. I ended up transing vision because of it.

I think though, now that I've bashed to dragon successfully and know what it takes, I probably won't get inner sight on an alt going for dragon. Granted, I'm not half way to crazy enough for that to ever happen.

Alright, so if you're good with how you want your skills, the absolute best bonus per credit for bashing speed is a crit pendant. Nothing else comes close for bashing. I'd get a level 2 before anything if I only cared about bashing. The downside to this is that a crit pendant has absolutely no effect on anything outside of bashing, so if you're interested in raiding/defending/combat down the road you're going to get no benefit at all from the crit pendant.

Second best boost for speed is going to be the artefact mace. This has the benefit of definitely impacting combat down the line.

Other than those two, the rest is likely going to be defensive arties which help you fight more/stronger things to get more experience. Priest is naturally a tanky bashing class so keep that in mind if you're just looking at bashing. Shield of Absorption is probably one of the best defensive bashing artefacts you can get if you're a class that can wield one (you are). Sip ring is also very good and has a bigger impact on combat (group more than solo) than an SoA does. Make sure you adjust your sip values if you go for a sip ring.

General rule for building up artefacts: Don't go past level 2 for something until you have other arties. The one possible exception for this is the artefact mace, where the increased speed can have large impacts on combos in combat, and having a faster balance bashing makes you slightly safer given you're not stuck in room as long after attacking. I don't know if this is the case for Priest, I'm sure there are actual Priests who can give you a better idea on this artie specifically.

Source: Level 105, probably highest bashing dps in the game atm if I were to get a lvl 3 crit pendant.

Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."

Artefact maces are very overpowered for bashing, as Kafziel said. A L1 mace will be far better than a L1 pendant (the mace is nearly a 25% DPS boost just for level 1), the pendant isn't even close at any level, though it is about half the cost so it might be worth getting if the extra 150 credits will take you a while to get (since you said you have ~4k credits, this doesn't apply here). A L2 pendant at high levels will be more comparable to a L1 mace, but I'd still go with the mace there, even if the L2 pendant wasn't a lot more expensive.

A critical bonus can't be perfectly compared to a damage/speed boost, so this isn't absolute, but what I'd do with roughly 4k credits is: skills (tri-trans+survival+avoidance, about 600 credits needed after bashing to 80), L3 mace, L2 crit pendant, SoA, and L1 belt or bracelet (or if you're fine with priest's tankiness, drop the belt/bracelet and upgrade the pendant to L3). Alternatively, if you want more defence, I'd go with skills, L2 mace, L2 pendant, SoA, L1 belt, L2 bracelet (or L1 bracelet and sip ring).

I don't remember exactly, but it was sometime after the weaponry changes (just checking to see if there had been any unannounced changes to balance bashing since the changes), I'd guess 6-8 months ago. There haven't been any announced changes to priest bashing since then, aside from lowering the endurance cost.

Hi @Nothx! Get level 2 mace and SoA to start with. Level 3 is good but if you have 4,000 credits the benefit isn't worth the extra 800 credits, at least in PVP. A diadem would help much more. Level 2 mace + diadem + quickwitted lines your smite and chasten up wonderfully. After that, you could get a crit pendant if you really want, it might save 5-10% on the amount of time you need to bash to dragon, but I'd advise against investing in bashing artifacts unless you plan on bashing past dragon. Crit pendant seems to really shine at dragon because of how it works - not only does it increase your chance for a critical hit, it increases the likelihood of getting more powerful critical hits. So it's far stronger at dragon level than it is at level 40 etc., where it might make your crit chance 1.5% instead of .5%.

I believe most pvp attacks scale with health damage (especially finishers), so things that help you heal provide more relative benefit than things that simply give you more health. Sip ring/regen ring/con belt or mayan bracelets would give a lot of benefit. Sip ring would definitely make your bashing life a lot easier.

Something I've been doing is just get the essentials, then get a feel for what you need. If you feel like you're dying too much, defensive artifacts are great for that. If you wish you could get around faster, wings are great for that. You don't have to spend all 4,000 credits all at once, and it's important to remember you'll be getting lessons + credits from leveling/credit sales/gold, too.

He did say he was mostly just bashing, though, and in that case straight con is way better than sip rings and regen rings as Sena's said.

Even in PvP, I think sip rings are a bit overvalued. There''s almost no attacks that scale that largely on max health (only finishers, choke, maybe crush?). Most attacks seem to have a fairly large static portion, and straight hp helps a lot more vs that. Also, more health makes you harder to break, which is important for some classes like dwb that can perma mangle you if your hp is too low.